Sunday, November 29, 2015

The “refugees welcome” culture

In June 2012, several refugees in the city of Würzburg stitched up their mouths to protest the lack of response to their political demands. Four demands have been at the core of the reinvigorated refugee movement ever since: Germany should abolish all Lagers
(asylum centres in which the large majority of asylum seekers is
housed, sometimes for years and decades, and often in isolated areas of
the countryside), stop all deportations, abolish mandatory residence law
(Residenzpflicht, alegal requirement for many refugees
to only live and move within narrow district boundaries defined by the
local foreigners’ office) and guarantee refugees the rights to work and
study. The refugee movements’ long-standing critique of German asylum
law and the discriminatory regulations governing the lives of many
asylum seekers has gained visibility in recent years – yet in the past
months, it has been eclipsed in the press and in public debate by the
new idea of a German Willkommenskultur (“welcoming culture”). Heeding the history and present of refugee resistance in Germany has never been more crucial.

The recent refugee movements in Germany
are part of the larger struggles of immigrants and minorities against
racism in post-War Germany (e.g. the Ford strike in 1973, or the movement of Antifa Gençlik,
founded in 1988). The history of racist violence, which came to head in
the reunified Germany of the early 1990s, provides an important
reference point for current debates. Increasing arson attacks on asylum
centres, and racist pogroms
in the 90s were cited as important justification for claims by
politicians and the media that Germany had “reached capacity”. As a
result, the German government severely restricted German asylum law in
1993.

Subsequently, self-organisations such as the Refugee Initiative Brandenburg
brought their critique of isolation and human rights violations in
German asylum homes to international attention. Other refugee
organisations such as The Voice, Karawane and Refugee Emancipation
developed strategies to reach out to refugees and invite them to join a
political struggle for human rights that included speaking out against
the total lack of education and work opportunities and denial of health
care.

The revived refugee movement in 2012 was
convinced that the master’s tools – individualised recourse to the
courts and bureaucratic labyrinths – would never dismantle the master’s
house. Refugees from all over Germany defied mandatory residence law,
mobilised across Lagers and set out on a protest march from
Southern Germany to the federal capital, insisting that they must be
present and visible when decisions about their lives were made. They
occupied public spaces, buildings, embassies, churches, trees and roofs in Berlin, Munich, Hamburg and Hannover and took to hunger strikes.

While the refugee movement eventually
gained access to the mainstream media and shifted the discourse on
migration, asylum and refugees slightly, this was recently swept away in
the context of Europe’s “refugee crisis”. Starting this past summer,
thousands of Germans offered their support to newly arrived migrants,
and Germany was lauded in the international press as the ‘welcoming
champion’. Yet, while the current flurry of activity offers conveniently
de-politicised gestures of charity, it mostly ignored or sidelined
refugees who were already self-organized. These groups have made clear
that sincere support must engage in the politics that frame causes and
experiences of the flight to Europe as well as the experiences refugees
make here.

But the racist violence of the 1990s
euphemised as “concerns of the citizenry” had paid off – and continues
to do so. A sharp rise in arson attacks on asylum centres as well as
rising rightwing agitation and violence once again occasion sombre
warnings by politicians and pundits/journalists about the need to ensure
that the “mood” of the population is kept in check.These
public figures suggest that high numbers of refugees will “provoke”
racist violence. To prevent violence, they advocate reducing the
attractiveness of Germany for refugees by curtailing their rights.
Political parties across the spectrum, media, and a significant
percentage of citizens now demand deportations and the worsening of
living conditions for all migrants – especially those not considered
‘proper’ refugees – in the name of Germany’s “welcome culture” for
‘real’ asylum seekers.

In both the smouldering remains of burned
asylum homes and the political manoeuvres that follow, recent history
looms large: a first batch of legislation to tighten German asylum law
was passed in July, followed by another set of restrictive changes in
October. A recent cabinet agreement was hailed by its advocates as the “harshest measures ever to limit the intake of refugees in Germany”.
The measures particularly lash out against Roma people from the Balkans
fleeing persistent racial discrimination and people escaping poverty.
Several countries are newly reclassified as safe countries of origin,
meaning people fleeing persecution there have very little chances of
getting asylum in Germany. Lager control is tightening; incarceration and deportations increasingly facilitated.

Which path Germany will now follow might
depend on which experiences become a reference point in current debates:
The shadow of the 90s where violent racists succeeded in having asylum
laws restricted or the history of self-organised refugee resistance.Those
who decide to “help” need to start by listening to what refugees
actually want. As The Voice activist Rex Osa has reiterated in a recent interview:
What refugees demand is that the notion of “help” needs to include
support for self-organisations of refugees and requires a double
perspective: It is important to look at both reasons for people to flee
and the racism they experience in Germany. It is only then that the
status quo of self-congratulatory, paternalistic help can be transcended
into political solidarity.

Authors

Joshua
Kwesi Aikins and Daniel Bendix are researchers in the Department for
Development and Postcolonial Studies at University of Kassel, and are
both active participants in the pro-refugee and anti-racism movements in
Germany.